WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready on Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, which critics say would undermine its accuracy by discouraging both legal and unauthorized immigrants from filling out the forms.

The case, the latest test of executive power in the Trump era, was heard by the court against the backdrop of the administration’s aggressive efforts to reduce illegal immigration as well as accusations of bad faith against the architect of the revised census questionnaire, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. It appeared to divide the court along the usual lines, with its five conservative members poised to defer to the administration and the court’s four liberal members ready to question its motives and methods.

The court’s decision, expected in late June, will be consequential. By one government estimate, about 6.5 million people might not be counted if the citizenship question is allowed. That could reduce Democratic representation when congressional districts are allocated in 2021 and affect how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending are distributed. Courts have also found that Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas could risk losing seats in the House, and that several states could lose federal money.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who took the lead in challenging the administration’s proposal, said that adding the question would do damage to the fundamental purpose of the census, which is to count everyone in the nation. “There is no doubt that people will respond less,” she said. “That has been proven in study after study.”

Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco, representing the Trump administration, acknowledged that the question could depress participation. But he said the information it would yield was valuable.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “if you add any particular question onto the census, you’re always trading off information and accuracy.”

How to strike that balance, he said, was a policy judgment properly made by Mr. Ross. The more conservative justices appeared to agree.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch noted that questions about citizenship had been asked on many census forms over the years and are commonplace around the world.

“It’s not like anybody in the room is suggesting the question is improper to ask in some way, shape or form,” Justice Gorsuch said. “And what we do, as well, with the evidence of practice around the world and virtually every English-speaking country and a great many others besides ask this question in their censuses?”

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Listen to ‘The Daily’: Why the Supreme Court Is Ruling on the Census

The U.S. census hasn’t asked every household about citizenship status since 1950. That could soon change — and with it, the balance of political power.

Listen to ‘The Daily’: Why the Supreme Court Is Ruling on the Census

The U.S. census hasn’t asked every household about citizenship status since 1950. That could soon change — and with it, the balance of political power.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: Ahead of the 2020 census, a case has been fast-tracked to the highest court about who we count and why. Adam Liptak on the biggest case in front of the Supreme Court this session. It’s Monday, April 29.

archived recording (wilbur ross)

Thank you, Chairman Culberson, Ranking Member Serrano, and members of the House Appropriations subcommittee.

adam liptak

So on March 20th of 2018 —

archived recording (wilbur ross)

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss President Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget request for the U.S. —

adam liptak

There is, as there is almost every day Congress is in session, an extremely routine and boring budget hearing.

archived recording

Secretary Ross, welcome. We’re really honored to have you here today.

adam liptak

And today, they have the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, come and testify.

archived recording

I wanted to ask a question about the traditional census undercount of young children.

adam liptak

They ask him about the census. The Commerce Department’s in charge of the census, and they’re preparing for the 2020 census.

archived recording (wilbur ross)

Well, it relates to the overall issue of how do we encourage count? You were here when —

adam liptak

And at one point, a Democratic congressman asks a question about an addition to the 2020 census forms sent to every household, which will ask everyone about whether they’re citizens of the United States.

[music]

archived recording

Secretary Ross, I know from your testimony that you take the administration of the census very seriously. And part of that duty is to administer it in a non-political, nonpartisan way. Is that correct?

archived recording (wilbur ross)

Yes, sir.

archived recording

Should political parties and campaign politics ever factor into what is asked of every household in the country on the census?

archived recording (wilbur ross)

No political party has asked us to do anything on the census. We have had a request, as everyone is aware, from the Department of Justice to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

adam liptak

And Wilbur Ross responds categorically that he was responding solely to the Justice Department’s request.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Has the president or anyone in the White House discussed with you or anyone on your team about adding this citizenship question?

archived recording (wilbur ross)

I’m not aware of any such.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Thank you.

archived recording (speaker 2)

Judge Carter.

archived recording (john carter)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have consistently —

adam liptak

So that hearing ends like most budget hearings. Nobody pays attention, and nobody thought at the time that that exchange with Wilbur Ross and whether he was telling the truth would turn out to be central to a case that would go to the Supreme Court.

[music]

michael barbaro

Adam, how does the census end up in a case before the Supreme Court?

adam liptak

So the census is required by the Constitution. It’s in the sixth sentence of the Constitution. It’s the first thing in the Constitution that actually directs the federal government to do something directly. And what it tells the federal government to do is, every 10 years, you have to count up everybody in the nation.

archived recording

(SINGING) In 80 million mailboxes ‘cross the U.S.A., the census is a’comin’ to help us plan the way.

adam liptak

Actually, the census is the largest peacetime mobilization in America. Aside from sending troops overseas, this is when we put the most people into the field to do something.

michael barbaro

That’s another way of saying it’s very important.

adam liptak

It’s the very cornerstone and foundation of our political system.

archived recording

(SINGING) Help your community get equal government representation. Help show where funds are needed for jobs, schools —

adam liptak

It’s how we allocate political power. It’s how we allocate congressional seats. It’s how we draw voting districts. And it’s used to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funds.

archived recording

(SINGING) You can count on me. Can we count on you?

adam liptak

And the way we allocate those up is by counting the number of people in the state — everybody in the state, citizens or not.

archived recording

(SINGING) Answer the census. We’re counting on you.

michael barbaro

Do we know why it was written that way, why it doesn’t specify citizens?

adam liptak

You know, the question really ought to be, why should it specify citizens? What the framers were interested in was getting a count of everyone in a nation that didn’t even really exist yet. And it wasn’t germane to any question immediately on their minds. The question the framers wanted to know is, how many people live in the United States? Where do they live? And then and now, that is job one of the census. Nobody disputes that that constitutional phrase “actual enumeration” is the main and most important thing the census needs to do.

michael barbaro

So I filled out a census back in — 2010 was probably the last time. And it’s not just asking me to be counted in terms of my name, my address. It’s also asking about race, sex, income. How is all of that demographic information related to those goals?

adam liptak

It’s not related to those goals, but it’s been something that, over time, the Census Bureau has also done and done well. And in various ways, in addition to counting people, it also gathers valuable information used for a ton of stuff, including many of the categories you listed. But it tries not to do that if it’s going to do harm to job one. That is, it tries not to ask questions if it’s going to do harm to the fundamental purpose of counting everyone.

[music]

michael barbaro

So what about the question of citizenship? How has the census approached that?

adam liptak

So from 1820 to 1950, various kinds of citizenship questions were not uncommon. Come the 1950s, there’s a revolution in social science and statistics and sampling. So they stop asking questions about citizenship, because they think it is one of those questions that’s going to do harm to the purpose of the census.

michael barbaro

And what’s the harm, exactly?

adam liptak

The harm is that people stop responding, or they respond falsely. So you’re simultaneously getting less participation — and substantially less participation — and also a bunch of false positives, because people who are fearful might say they’re citizens when they’re not. So the Census Bureau comes to think, we’re going to keep the main census form pure and focused on the things we really need to know.

[music]

michael barbaro

So despite any efforts to get this citizenship question back on the census after the 1950s, when the social science begins to say it’s a bad idea, it has remained off the census.

adam liptak

Right. The Census Bureau’s longstanding position is that it’s a terrible idea to put the citizenship question onto the main census form.

archived recording

Overnight, the Trump administration announced a move that could impact the balance of power for years to come. The 2020 census —

michael barbaro

So Adam, how do we get to today, when the United States government is requesting that that question return to the census?

adam liptak

Well, President Trump, of course, ran on an assertive platform of addressing unlawful immigration. And he puts Wilbur Ross into the job of commerce secretary.

archived recording

Secretary Wilbur Ross announcing the decision following a request by the Justice Department.

adam liptak

And Wilbur Ross announces in March of 2018 that he’s going to add the citizenship question.

archived recording 1

A new battle is brewing over the 2020 U.S. census.

archived recording 2

California is suing the Trump administration over the decision to add that controversial question about citizenship to the 2020 census.

archived recording 3

At least 12 states are expected to follow California’s lead and sue —

adam liptak

Wilbur Ross is promptly sued by 18 states and also any number of civil liberties and immigration groups.

archived recording

Given the way that this administration has attacked immigrants, you can understand why immigrant families would be afraid to fill out the census questionnaire.

adam liptak

So there’s a lot of skepticism that it’s got an anti-immigration feel to it. But he says no.

archived recording (wilbur ross)

Well, the request was made by the Department of Justice quite a few months ago. Justice Department feels they need it so that they can enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters. That’s the genesis of the request for adding this question back in.

michael barbaro

So Wilbur Ross is saying he needs this citizenship data to protect America’s voting rights.

adam liptak

And the voting rights of minorities, in particular.

michael barbaro

Got it.

adam liptak

It’s also true that since the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, no administration, including administrations generally thought to be much more committed to the Voting Rights Act, ever thought they needed this data. So there’s reason to question it. And the people who actually work in this area say that they can’t think of a case where they needed more citizenship data than they had. And, of course, they say, also, that this way of getting citizenship data is unreliable. Because you will have as many as a third of the people giving false answers.

archived recording

Well, today, a trial begins in federal court in San Francisco over the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census.

adam liptak

And these lawsuits progress. And as part of the lawsuits, the plaintiffs start to get access to information and documents. And they start taking testimony from people. And it turns out that there’s a whole different backstory to what happened.

[music]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

archived recording 1

Welcome back. U.S. commerce secretary Wilbur Ross is being accused of misleading members of Congress. Earlier this year —

archived recording 2

Wilbur Ross told Congress earlier this year he had nothing to do with adding a new question about citizenship to the U.S. census survey.

archived recording 3

Now, this new Justice Department filing suggests otherwise.

archived recording 4

Emails and documents have surfaced that indicate that it was actually Wilbur Ross who was the person that wanted to add this immigration question to the 2020 census.

adam liptak

What actually happened was not that the Justice Department woke up one day and asked Wilbur Ross to do this, but rather that, almost from the day Wilbur Ross took office, he was hunting around for a way to get this question onto the form.

archived recording

And most importantly, he said he didn’t discuss this question with the White House.

adam liptak

He meets with Steve Bannon.

archived recording

Steve Bannon put Wilbur Ross in touch with Kris Kobach, the former secretary of state of Kansas, the leading architect of laws restricting voting and immigration in the U.S., to add this question to the census. And it was Kobach —

adam liptak

So he is consulting with people who are strongly opposed to immigration and very much on board for adding this citizenship question.

michael barbaro

And what happens after he meets with them?

adam liptak

He now needs a reason. He knows what he wants to do. He wants to add the question. But he needs a reason. He needs a legal justification. He doesn’t have one. So he goes to the Department of Justice and says, can you give me a reason? They said, well, we don’t need that information. We’re good. He goes to the Department of Homeland Security — same answer. He goes back to D.O.J. — same answer. He goes to the attorney general. And the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, agrees to play ball. And lo and behold, a rationale emerges, this rationale that you don’t really associate too much with the Trump administration, that they would like to enforce the Voting Rights Act more vigorously, and that’s why they need this information. And it emerges that Wilbur Ross has kept his own staff in the dark. They, operating in good faith, on hearing that the Justice Department wants to add this question, go to their boss and say, boss, let’s not do this. Here are all the reasons we shouldn’t do it. This is going to be bad. This is going to decrease participation by 6.5 million people. And they don’t know, and are not told, that this whole enterprise has been precooked. And when the chief scientist of the Census Bureau is asked how that made him feel, the fact that he was operating in good faith, he was giving his best scientific judgment to his boss, who had already decided to go a different way, he choked up and visibly held back tears, as the trial judge described it.

michael barbaro

So this story, revealed from this testimony and these documents, is pretty much the exact opposite of what Wilbur Ross has told Congress, that Department of Justice came to him. In fact, he went to the Department of Justice in search of a legal rationale.

adam liptak

If you go back to that boring hearing and his categorical statement that he was responding solely to a request from the Justice Department, that does not look truthful.

michael barbaro

Well, as far as you can tell, Adam, what specific goals would adding the citizenship question accomplish for Wilbur Ross and for the Trump administration?

adam liptak

So that’s a real mystery at the heart of all this. The judges who’ve looked at this all decided that Wilbur Ross was not telling the truth. But they all said, we don’t know what his real reason was. I have three theories. One is one expressed by President Trump, and it’s short and sweet. In a tweet, he says, the American people deserve to know who is in this country. That suggests that we want to know where unauthorized immigrants are so that we can track them down and deport them. Theory number two is that Wilbur Ross actually welcomes the drop in participation. Many people in California and Texas and Florida and New York wouldn’t participate. Non-participation means you have fewer people being counted, meaning you will have less representation in Congress and, not incidentally, in the electoral college. And if Wilbur Ross’s goal is to suppress participation disproportionately, because it’ll mostly affect blue states, that might be a political goal he would embrace.

michael barbaro

Got it.

adam liptak

And then, finally — and this is actually my theory. It’s a tad complicated, but bear with me. There is a move afoot in some parts of the country to draw voting districts based only on eligible voters, not everybody. So you have one person, one vote. And that means you need voting districts of equal size. But the Supreme Court has never definitively said about who do you count to make them of equal size? Currently, everywhere in the country, we count everybody. So in blue states, in urban centers, with lots of kids and unauthorized immigrants and prisoners, you get a lot of people not eligible to vote but are counted for voting districts. I think this may well be part of a long-term strategy to move to a different kind of counting, to only count eligible voters for drawing voting districts. That would be very good for Republicans. But to do that, you need to be able to say that you have good citizenship data.

michael barbaro

So in any of these scenarios — one, two or three — that you’ve outlined, the Republican Party and the Trump administration get something that they want when it comes to their political power and their efforts to more aggressively enforce immigration law. It’s kind of a win-win.

adam liptak

That’s right. Or maybe they just want to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

[music]

michael barbaro

So how does this play out in the courts?

adam liptak

Three different judges take a close look at it.

archived recording

A third federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Today’s ruling by a U.S. district in Maryland says that the addition of a citizenship question is arbitrary and capricious.

adam liptak

And the administration has bad luck in the lower courts, who uniformly forbid it from adding this question to the census. But they’re facing a deadline here. The census forms need to be printed this June, which means if the Supreme Court’s going to hear the case, there’s no time for the ordinary procedure, which would be for appeals courts first to consider these complicated and important legal questions. Instead, the administration asks the Supreme Court to let it leapfrog and go straight to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court fast-tracks the case and agrees to hear it in April.

archived recording

We’ll hear argument this morning in case 18-966, the Department of Commerce vs. New York. General Francisco.

michael barbaro

And what happens last week, when this case goes before the court?

archived recording (noel francisco)

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court.

adam liptak

So I think this is easily the most important case of the term. The court, which usually hears hour-long arguments, grants 80 minutes. Forty of them go to the administration’s lawyer, the solicitor general Noel Francisco, who basically makes the point, listen —

archived recording (noel francisco)

Because at the end of the day, if you add any particular question onto the census, you’re always trading off information and accuracy. In 141 —

adam liptak

Every time you add a question, you may have some drop-off in participation. It’s a cost-benefit analysis.

archived recording (noel francisco)

And that underscores why we don’t think this is really subject to judicial review.

adam liptak

And that analysis should be done by Wilbur Ross, not by the Supreme Court. And he faces an intense barrage of questions, particularly from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is completely unconvinced that there’s any decent rationale supporting adding the question and that it would do a lot of harm.

archived recording (sonia sotomayor)

There is no doubt that people will respond the less because of the census. That has been proven in study after study. One census surveyor described an incident where he walked into a home, started asking citizenship, and the person stopped and left his home, leaving the census surveyor sitting there.

michael barbaro

And Adam, how does intention — Wilbur Ross’s and the Trump administration’s — factor into these questions and arguments?

adam liptak

So the solicitor general basically says, it’s none of your business, that he’s allowed to come into office with intuitions about what he might want to do —

archived recording (noel francisco)

I think it is quite common for cabinet secretaries to come into office with ideas and inclinations to discuss with their staff and discuss with their colleagues whether there is a legal and policy basis for that inclination.

adam liptak

— that he has presented a perfectly good rationale —

archived recording (noel francisco)

I think the secretary fully acknowledged that there was an upside to the request, that having citizenship data would help improve Voting Rights Act enforcement.

adam liptak

— and everything operated just exactly as it should have.

michael barbaro

And what do the more liberal-leaning justices say to that? Do they accept that argument that intention doesn’t matter?

adam liptak

No. They say that, sure, executive branch officials have discretion. But they need to give a reasoned explanation. They can’t be arbitrary and capricious. They can’t be making stuff up. They can’t be relying on pretexts. And Justice Kagan says —

archived recording (elena kagan)

It did really seem like the secretary was shopping for a need. He goes to the Justice Department. Justice Department says, we don’t need anything. Goes to D.H.S. D.H.S. says they don’t need anything. Goes back to the Justice Department.

adam liptak

She says you can’t read this record without sensing that this need — referring to the Voting Rights Act —

archived recording (elena kagan)

This need is a contrived one.

adam liptak

— is a contrived one. And that runs afoul of principles of administrative law, which, in some settings, the court cares a lot about.

michael barbaro

And what about the conservative judges on the court?

adam liptak

Well, the four of them who talk, which is to say we’re going to take out Justice Clarence Thomas, seem prepared to say, this is an area in which Wilbur Ross has substantial discretion.

archived recording

How to fill out the form, what to put on the form. So how are we to think about —

It’s not like this question, or anybody in the room, is suggesting that the question’s improper to ask in some way, shape or form.

adam liptak

And he says, also, and what do we do, as well, with the evidence of practice around the world?

archived recording (neil gorsuch)

And virtually every English-speaking country, and a great many others, besides, ask this question in their censuses.

adam liptak

And Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the second Trump appointee, also discusses international trends.

archived recording (brett kavanaugh)

The United Nations recommends that countries ask a citizenship question on the census. And a number of other countries do it. Spain, Germany, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Mexico ask a citizenship question.

adam liptak

And what’s lurking in the background, in a way, that nobody quite says is, yeah, but is there, in those countries, the white-hot question of immigration that we’re going through in the United States in 2019? Do you take account of the social context of asking the question today?

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

adam liptak

I mean, is there a hotter political issue in the United States today than immigration, at the borders, in asylum? And injecting the question in this contemporary political and social context is a different kind of move than doing the same thing in 1850.

[music]

michael barbaro

So what happens in this case, Adam? How do you expect the Supreme Court to rule?

adam liptak

I expect, probably, on the last day of the term, in the last week of June, for the Supreme Court to do the predictable thing, which is by a 5 to 4 vote, with all the Republican appointees in the majority and all the Democratic appointees in dissent, for the court to endorse the addition of the citizenship question to the census. And that will not be a particularly satisfying outcome for people who would hope the court could find a way to look less political.

michael barbaro

And practically speaking, what will that mean?

adam liptak

Well, it means the question gets added to the form. It means that civil rights groups and immigrants’ groups will do a tremendous amount of outreach and try to persuade people to please fill out the form. Please, it’s important. It matters. And to a large extent, they’re going to fail.

michael barbaro

Adam, thank you very much.

adam liptak

Thank you, Michael.

archived recording

(SINGING) Can we count on you? You can count on me. And together, we will see each other through. Answer the census. We’re counting on you. Answer the census. We’re counting on you.

michael barbaro

Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording

I want to start off our brief press conference here by expressing our condolences to all the people that — injured in a senseless act of tragedy that visited Poway this afternoon.

adam liptak

Officials are calling a deadly shooting at a California synagogue a hate crime motivated by anti-Semitism and inspired by previous massacres at houses of worship.

archived recording

At about 11:23 this morning, a white, male adult entered the Chabad temple.

michael barbaro

The suspected shooter, a 19-year-old from San Diego, screamed that Jews were ruining the world as he stormed the synagogue and posted a hate-filled manifesto that embraced white nationalism.

archived recording

This individual was with a AR-type assault weapon and opened fire on the people inside the synagogue. During the shooting, four individuals were wounded and transported to Palomar Hospital. Sadly, one of the individuals succumbed to their wounds.

michael barbaro

In the manifesto, the shooter claimed to have been influenced by the recent shootings at two mosques in New Zealand and a synagogue in Pittsburgh. And on Sunday, Attorney General William Barr clashed with House Democrats over his upcoming testimony about the Mueller report, with Barr threatening to skip the hearing and Democrats threatening to subpoena him. The dispute revolves around the proposed format of the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. The committee’s chairman, Jerry Nadler of New York, wants to allow the committee’s staff lawyers, in addition to House members, to question Barr, something that Barr opposes. The standoff over who can question Barr could delay or derail the hearing, which is now scheduled for Thursday. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh also discussed international trends. “The United Nations recommends that countries ask a citizenship question on the census,” he said. “And a number of other countries do it. Spain, Germany, Canada, Australia, Ireland and Mexico ask a citizenship question.”

Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, representing states and localities challenging Mr. Ross’s decision, responded that “the U.N. also says to be careful to test questions to make sure they don’t interfere with the enumeration.”

She said the court should protect the accuracy of the census form given that information about citizenship can be obtained in other ways.

“The question,” she said, “is whether it should be collected on the very instrument whose principal function is to count the population, when we have such strong evidence that it will depress that count and make it less accurate.”

Much of the argument, which lasted 80 minutes rather than the usual hour, concerned statistical modeling. “This gets really, really technical,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said in a frustrated voice.

The case — United States Department of Commerce v. New York, No. 18-966 — has its roots in the text of the Constitution, which requires an “actual enumeration” every 10 years, with the House of Representatives to be apportioned based on “the whole number of persons in each state.”

In addition to counting the number of people in the nation, the census has also sought other kinds of information. Whatever the Supreme Court rules, the 2020 short form will include questions about sex, age, race and Hispanic or Latino origin. Some of those questions may discourage participation, too.

Dale E. Ho, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the citizenship question would do more than suppress the response rate. It would also introduce inaccuracies, he said. “The evidence shows,” he said, “that noncitizens respond to the question inaccurately one-third of the time.”

The more liberal justices said that was a reason to defer to expert statisticians in the Census Bureau who opposed adding the question.

Justice Elena Kagan said she could not understand why Mr. Ross had rejected the conclusions of his own experts. “I searched the record,” she said, “and I don’t see any reason.”

Mr. Francisco said the evidence supplied by the experts was not definitive. “Look,” he said, “there’s no question that the bureau staff preferred not to have this question on the census. But what they were telling the secretary was that they couldn’t tell which model would be more or less accurate.”

The federal government has long gathered information about citizenship. But since 1950, it has not included a question about it in the census forms sent once a decade to each household. Mr. Ross, the commerce secretary, has said he ordered the citizenship question to be added back solely in response to a December 2017 request from the Justice Department, which said data about citizenship would help it enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Three federal trial judges have ruled that the evidence in the record demonstrates that Mr. Ross was not telling the truth. He had long before decided to add the question, the judges found, and he pressured the Justice Department to supply a rationale.

Justice Sotomayor suggested Mr. Ross had manufactured the reason. “This is a solution in search of a problem,” she said.

Mr. Francisco rejected that critique. “It is quite common,” he said, “for cabinet secretaries to come into office with ideas and inclinations to discuss with their staff and discuss with their colleagues whether there is a legal and policy basis for that inclination.”

Documents disclosed in the case showed that Mr. Ross had discussed the citizenship issue early in his tenure with Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and an architect of the Trump administration’s tough policies against immigrants, and that Mr. Ross had met at Mr. Bannon’s direction with Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state and a vehement opponent of unlawful immigration.

But Mr. Francisco said the Justice Department’s request was the key to the case. “There’s no evidence in this record that the secretary would have asked this question had the Department of Justice not requested it,” Mr. Francisco said. “And there’s no evidence in this record that the secretary didn’t believe that the Department of Justice actually wanted this information to improve Voting Rights Act enforcement.”

Justice Kagan said the record contained plenty of evidence that Mr. Ross had been “shopping for a need” to ask the question by approaching both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

She described Mr. Ross’s efforts: “Goes to the Justice Department. Justice Department says we don’t need anything. Goes to D.H.S. D.H.S. says they don’t need anything. Goes back to the Justice Department. Makes it clear that he’s going to put in a call to the attorney general. Finally, the Justice Department comes back to him and says, ‘O.K., we can give you what you want.’”

“So you can’t read this record without sensing,” Justice Kagan said, “that this need is a contrived one.”

The Supreme Court heard the case on an expedited schedule, stepping in before any appeals court had ruled on the matter. The court’s speed was almost certainly a result of a looming deadline — the census forms are set to be printed in June.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Conservatives on Court Appear To Back New Citizenship Query. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe